Dance a Little Jig, Weld a Little TIG

Finished the last window on Sunday and patched up a couple of bad shingles. That's about it for the house exterior for a while (can I have an amen, Brothers and Sisters?). Watched the marathon and the Bears and a little Sunday Night Football as well. Can't do much more of that, however. There's only so many commercials for beer, cars, phones and politicians one man can take. Before I moved to the country my garage had cable and I could work with the little black and white set tuned to football or hockey and was happy as a clam. With instant replay you never really had to watch the game too closely - just look up when the crowd roared.

Now-days since I am out in the country, my shop radio only picks up a couple of stations clearly and I'm getting real tired of the same songs and commercials they play all the time. Maybe it's time for me to Stop Believin' and start listening to the MP3 player or something else that will provide a little entertainment and background noise to drown out my tinnitus. I need to spend some time this winter converting some of my vinyl or change my schedule and work late nights on the projects. There's a public radio station that I can pick up that plays a lot of good music in the evening/night hours. It's a damn shame the only time you can hear jazz, world or blues music is after the sun goes down.

I welded this up for one of my former welding and boxing students. If he had access to a TIG welder he could have easily welded it himself but I was glad to do it for him. I welded it at the house rather than at the college mostly so I would have a reason to finish getting my TIG welder in order. Since the postflow timer quit working on the machine and I didn't want to invest $400 in a new one for a 50 year old machine that's seen a lot of service, I bought a torch with a gas valve built in for $40. I had already installed that but I still needed to change the argon supply hose and the power cable around. I made some tubes for storing my filler rods previously but I think next up I should make a rack for them. I'll then have everything pretty much in order to switch back and forth from TIG to stick easily and efficiently. Plus, I'll be much more inclined to actually get something done if I don't have to spend 10 minutes fiddle-fartin' around every time I need to tack something together.

The new bike parts are due today so I'll be back on that project. Looks like more rain on the way - might as well spend some time in the shop - after I set up the MP3 speakers, that is.